Understanding Skan Analytics and Its Role in Mobile Marketing

Mobile applications are ubiquitous in today’s society – from gaming and shopping, to education and health services, apps have grown to be an integral part of some people’s everyday lives. With so many apps competing for users’ attention, it’s vital that marketers and developers understand what works and what does not. This is where Skan Analytics fits in – it enables businesses to objectively analyze the performance of their ads, and how users are interacting with their apps. Without the data provided by Skan Analytics, making decisions about ad spend and user experience would be nearly impossible.

. An MMP helps marketers collect, analyze and compile app data into one organized dashboard. Apptrove (for example) is an MMP that helps marketers streamline their tracking of installs, campaigns and user journeys, on their app, and in one view. When combined with Skan Analytics, platforms such as Apptrove, provide marketers with an accurate and insightful overview of app performance, and user experience, even with privacy rules in place that limit a marketer’s access to personal data on users.

So, let’s unpack some more of why Skan Analytics is useful, and some of the other terms associated with Skan – skad meaning, skadnetwork, and the newest update for the analytics systems, SKAN 4.0!

What is Skan Analytics?

Skan Analytics refers to a methodology for measuring advertising effectiveness for mobile ads running on Apple devices. Apple turned to this way of measuring as part of their privacy-first approach. Prior to this approach, advertisers had user-level data, such as which user clicked on an ad and then subsequently installed the app. But as privacy became of greater concern, Apple updated their approach to an aggregated method of reporting. This means that instead of giving user-level reports, Apple now provides reporting within aggregate measures to give marketers insight while protecting users data. Mobile app marketers also depend on mobile measurement platform (MMPs) to streamline a lot of this process

The word skad itself can be understood simply to mean “StoreKit Ad Network.” This is Apple’s framework for enabling this methodology. In simple terms, it connects advertising networks, app developers and users without disclosing an individual user’s identity.

Why is Skan Analytics Important?

The global mobile app market is enormous: over $400 million in consumer spending occurs each year. With this amount of money in stake, every dollar counts when it comes to advertising. Skan Analytics allow companies to track advertising effectiveness, without violating privacy regulations. This effectively allows advertisers to be more efficient and spend their advertising dollars wisely on campaigns that produce results.

To imagine this: a gaming company could be spending thousands of dollars on advertising where they don’t have the proper tracking enabled and don’t know which campaigns are bringing in users that are loyal to their games vs ones who will download the game and stop engaging with it shortly thereafter.

What is SKAdNetwork?

Skadnetwork serves as the foundational component of Apple’s advertisement tracking ecosystem that emphasizes privacy. Specifically, it is the tool that genuinely sends postbacks, signals to advertisers that some action occurred, such as an app install. Importantly, these signals do not include any identifiable personal data, but only provide summary-level data. 

For marketers, this means that they must fundamentally change their ways of working. Although marketers do not receive the same detailed tactics as before, marketers receive sufficient information that they can still make smarter decisions. If skadnetwork is analyzed together with Skan Analytics, organizations can properly balance user privacy with tracking performance. 

Improvement to SKAN 4.0

Apple provides improvements to the designated platform, SKAN 4.0. This addition improves many of the issues marketers encountered with prior versions. The most significant change is that SKAN 4.0 provides more postbacks, meaning marketers receive various updates about users after an install, instead of just one postbacks. Marketers can see if the user continues opening the app “after multiple weeks” of an install. 

There was also a major upgrade with user journey signals, delivering and providing sufficient data to optimize the install beyond the install. Within Skan Analytics, marketers will also be able to figure out a full customer journey after informatoin about long-term considers as well as with install to long-term users. 

Final Thoughts

Skan Analytics is leading the way for the mobile marketing future. As data privacy continues to be a greater topic for concern for businesses, it’ll be imperative that some solutions will create a balance between performance tracking and user trust. Apple’s skadnetwork and the new updates delivered in SKAN 4.0 demonstrate the direction the industry is heading. 

For marketers, the way ahead is also clear. By utilizing tools in conjunction with a reliable mobile measurement partner, such as Apptrove, it’s possible to keep advertising not only effective but also aligned with respect to privacy. As mobile apps continue to gain relevance, marketers need to anticipate, understand and optimize for these systems if they want to succeed long-term.